I'd like to confess something, I wanted to be a bit profane on Fairy-Max, as it plays both apothecary games so open. But after trying to play myself against myself on the diagrams (I'm blundering later now) I've noticed that with so many leapers these games are pretty open themselves. So pushing pawns and closing the game may not work. This is a weakness of both apothecary games I have to think about in the future.
Moreover, I'm now in a position to defend apothecary 2 (or small apothecary 2 as is it's real name- but as of now they are the only apothecary games, simple apothecary works) against your criticism that the game is too long (and maybe stale as a result). Introducing the minor pieces enriches the middlegame a lot and even if more often than not the minor pieces get exchanced in the middle game (camels in the endgame are very rare, zebras even more so) the damage to pawn structure and the more weird endgame pieces combinations make up for the increased lenght. It's all an opinion of course.
H.G.,
I'd like to confess something, I wanted to be a bit profane on Fairy-Max, as it plays both apothecary games so open. But after trying to play myself against myself on the diagrams (I'm blundering later now) I've noticed that with so many leapers these games are pretty open themselves. So pushing pawns and closing the game may not work. This is a weakness of both apothecary games I have to think about in the future.
Moreover, I'm now in a position to defend apothecary 2 (or small apothecary 2 as is it's real name- but as of now they are the only apothecary games, simple apothecary works) against your criticism that the game is too long (and maybe stale as a result). Introducing the minor pieces enriches the middlegame a lot and even if more often than not the minor pieces get exchanced in the middle game (camels in the endgame are very rare, zebras even more so) the damage to pawn structure and the more weird endgame pieces combinations make up for the increased lenght. It's all an opinion of course.